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CENTENNIAL ORATION 





OF THE PAST 



BY 
LUCIAN LAMAR KNIGHT, LLD., R R. S 

STATE HISTORIAN OF GEORGIA 



Delivered in the Chapel of the State 
University at Athens, Ga., Tuesday 
Evening, June 15, 1920, at the Cen- 
tennial Exercises of the Phi Kappa 
Society, Founded by Chief Justice 
Joseph Henry Lumpkin. 










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CENTENNIAL ORATION: THE VOICES OF THE PAST. 
By Lucian Lamar Knight. 

Delivered in the chapel, at the University of Georgia, Tuesday even- 
ing, June 15, 1920, on the occasion of the centennial exercises of the 
Phi Kappa Society, founded by Chief Justice Joseph Henry Lumpkin. 

Mr. President, Members of the Phi Kappa Society, Ladies and 
Gentlemen: 

The Sage of Monticello was the writer of his own epitaph. 
But, on the crumbling tomb of the great statesman, whose 
heart was the fountain of Democracy, we find no mention of 
the fact that he was ever President of the United States. 
Earth's transient honors wore no glitter in his dying eyes. 
But, with the border lights of an undiscovered country 
drawing near, his farewell thought — the last fond object of 
affection upon which his fancy lingered — was an intellectual 
nursery for the young manhood of America. Men might 
forget that he was ever the republic's chief executive ; they 
might even forget that he founded the Democratic party; 
but, side by side, with Freedom's protest and with Religion's 
bulwark, he wished them to remember that he founded the 
University of Virginia. If the glorious Georgian, who sleeps 
tonight upon the banks of the Oconee, in honor of whom 
this hour's blaze of eulogy is kindled — if Joseph Henry 
Lumpkin had left behind him an inscription for his monu- 
ment, it would have told us nothing of his austere work in 
organizing the Supreme Court of Georgia, but rather, I 
fancy, would the Great Chief Justice have chosen to inform 
posterity that he was the father of the old Phi Kappa. 

Majestic mother of imperial men! Enriched with the 
achievements of a century, what a theme for contemplation 
is Phi Kappa's record of a hundred years ! There is scarcely 



a page of Georgia's history in which her features are not 
imaged; and even the barest catalogue of her illustrious 
names reads like a muster-roll of the immortals. How 
richly her contributions cluster! — thick as autumnal leaves 
in Vallombrosa or star-dust on the Milky Way. If he who 
rocked her cradle when these oaks were young be here to- 
night, what a sense of ecstasy must thrill his soul to see her 
now, no longer an infant but a queen — full-statued, fair, 
and wreathed in all her beauty — standing, like Ruth the 
Moabitess, amid her garnered sheaves, the hope of Georgia 
kindled on her brow, and around her the yellow harvest of 
her golden fields ! 

Voiced in a syllable, the verdict of the hour is this — "well- 
done !" There will be no waning of our star of statehood — 
but glory enough for Georgia, in Phi Kappa wreaths alone, 
if the record of the next one hundred years be just as ra- 
diant. 

Whatever of incense I shall burn tonight upon the altar 
of Phi Kappa is consistent with the profoundest veneration 
for our sister society, organized when the university opened 
her doors and named not unworthily for that great Athenian 
orator, who pronounced the Oration on the Crown. Ever a 
generous rival, it is not for me to utter one syllable in her 
disparagment. I feel a Georgian's pride in her rich heri- 
tage of renown ; nor shall I be tempted to forget that, among 
her proud alumni, are Toombs and Pierce, Nisbet and John- 
son — to say nothing of that peerless soldier who, at Appo- 
mattox, commanded half of Lee's immortal army — General 
John B. Gordon. Deprived of these contributions to our 
wealth of character, of intellect and of honor, Georgia would 
indeed be poorer. Many a name on her storied page would 
disappear; and many a star on her historic scroll would be 
extinguished. 

It was due, I am told, to an ancient quarrel, that Phi 
Kappa on this day, one hundred years ago, unfurled her 
banner. But the feudal fires no longer burn. The objects 
sought were these — to stimulate the powers of argument, 
to develop the god-like faculty of reason, and to multiply 
the intellectual laurels of the oldest State University in 



America. We rejoice tonight, with our alma mater, that 
her ancient charter, drawn by the great Abraham Baldwin 
and brought to Athens by the beloved Peter Meldrim, now 
reposes within her honored walls. Like Roman wrestlers, 
in the dust of the arena, or Grecian runners, in the Olympic 
games, these two societies — the Demosthenian and the Phi 
Kappa — have ever vied. But not for the vain-glorious 
laurel, not in envy of each other's prowess, not in fratridi- 
cal bitterness or rancor; but, like the noble Gracchi, whose 
glory it was to bedeck a parental brow and to kindle pride 
in the mother's heart of old Cornelia, The Demosthenian 
and the Phi Kappa ! Together, they have written Georgia's 
history! Both are soon to be represented in the nation's 
Hall of Fame, where only two statues can represent a State. 
Long may they live, to enrich the renown of this venerated 
institution, and, side by side, to journey down the ages, like 
Castor and Pollux, among the constellations of the firma- 
ment! 



Tonight we come, at our mother's call, to celebrate her 
centennial jubilee. Not a single absent member! For, 
whether in the flesh or in the spirit, all have come, and to 
the roll-call of this gala hour answer "here." Hoist to the 
top Old Glory's rippling colors! Bring forth the timbrel 
and the harp, and let the anthems swell to heaven from all 
the daughters of song. But, to warm our hearts, we need 
no other wine than Memory's. Horace may prefer the old 
Falernian from the Italian hills. But we'll drink to our 
mother's health in the rarer vintage of her own purple 
clusters. 

Phi Kappa winds her bugle-horn; and not alone from 
those whose hearts are beating but from the cold sepul- 
chres of the dead, seen and unseen, heard and unheard, there 
gathers to her call a mightier clan than ever rallied to the 
blast of Roderick Dhu. Beyond these lighted walls, in cir- 
cling ranks of silence, there stretches upward to the stars, 
a spectral army, a phamtom host, which no man can num- 
ber — there are re-enforcements in the sky above us, hover- 
ing there like the viewless chariots in the air at Dothan. 

From Laurel Groves and from Bonaventures — from Rose 



Hills and from Linwoods- — from Oaklands and from West- 
views — from Summervilles and from Oconees — -from every 
hallowed fane in which Phi Kappa dust is sleeping, these 
shades have hastened hither. They come from the trailing 
mosses of the lowland live-oaks, at the ocean's front and 
from the wandering wild-rose on the mountain slopes, be- 
yond the Etowah. They come from every moldering urn of 
Georgia's past — from all her cedared hill-tops and from all 
her winding waters and from all her silent solitudes. They 
come from senate halls and from tented-fields, from cabinet 
portfolios and from executive chairs. They come from Ma- 
nassas, whose arms of victory caught the bleeding Bartow, 
and from Fredericksburg, where fell an ever-glorious 
Thomas R. R. Cobb. 

"Through burning Argonne's fiery hell 
O'er blazing St. Mihiel"— 

they come from those who followed Pershing's star, to 
tell us of the Georgia lads who linger on the Marne — 

"Those boys of ours whose hearts of gold 
Sleep in the dust of France." 

Phi Kappa's crowned immortals all are here. They come 
in grand procession — soldiers and statesmen — scholars and 
divines — poets and thinkers — each wrapped in his immor- 
tal robes and with the garlands of his fame around him — 
each bearing in his hand a tribute for his alma mater's 
altar — and they come from all over Georgia's wide lap, to 
mingle eternity with time, and to kindle upon Phi Kappa's 
brow the smile of a century's benediction. Illustrious pil- 
grims from the past, all hail ! 



On the threshold of this hour, I greet with reverent sal- 
utation the spirit of our great founder : Georgia's first Chief 
Justice. Illustrious shade! Unique among all our jurists, 
there can be no just appraisal of his character which does 
not "exhaust language of its tribute and repeat virtue by all 
her names." Even the barest outline of his life suggests the 
embellishment of an artist's brush. But there he stands, in 
his majestic isolation. From his exalted pinacle among our 



public men — from his own peculiar niche in Georgia's Tem- 
ple of Fame — no power of fate can dispossess him, and there 
he stands forever. I have called him our first Chief Jus- 
tice. But the record will sustain me, if I also call him our 
greatest. Without precedents to guide him, he was a 
pioneer in pathless woods, a pilot in uncharted waters. 
He was the incarnate soul of justice, a well-spring of law; 
but, above everything else, like Hamlet's father, he was a 
man, and, 

"take him, for all in all 
We shall not look upon his like again." 

Here in Athens, the home of his adoption, where his life 
was largely spent, the very lanes and streets through which 
he walked are fragrant with the forget-me-nots of his fame ; 
and here, in the love which his neighbors bore him — here, 
in a stately mansion of the old regime, with the gentle 
partner of his life beside him, and his little ones at his feet, 
he found his labor's recompense. Yonder he sleeps where 
the waters wind. The tears of a state bedew his couch of 
rest; and the violets of England are not sweeter on the 
grave of Hallam. 

Test him by whatever touch-stone you will. Measure 
him by whatever standard you please. View him from 
whatever angle you may — he commands our homage, our 
veneration, our love. There never sat upon the bench in 
Georgia a saintlier character. The ermine which befitted 
him so well was not purer than the heart which it covered. 
Nor was the dew, on Yonah's topmost pine, less sullied by 
the stains of earth or more serenely lifted to the airs of 
heaven, in the virgin crystal of its mountain home. He 
was the very Sir Galahad of our judiciary; but not less was 
he distinguished for those powers of intellect which made 
him a Saul among giants. It was not a weakling's weapon 
which he wielded — it was the scimitar of a Saladin ; it was 
the battle-axe of a Richard ; it was the hammer of a Charles 
Martel. Profound in his legal learning, he was unrivaled in 
his imaginative gifts — a poet in his sweep of vision, an ar- 
tist in his eye for color, and a wizard in his witchery of 



words. These elements of strength fitted him for the 
forum; but he leaned, with a lovers passion, to the scales 
of a gentler calling. Even the chancellorship of this Uni- 
versity could not unclasp his arms from the embrace of the 
law. In the palmiest days of Rome, he might have worn the 
toga of the imperial senate. Had he done so, the laurels of 
speech, for these twenty centuries, might not have rested 
upon a Cicero's brow. In the Lumpkin Law School, he was 
the Gamaliel of many a Paul; and sweeter accents were 
never heard on the bema of Athens than, in many an hour's 
discourse, charmed the young Georgians who here sat at 
his feet. 

Incomparably an orator, he scorned the glittering rewards 
of politics, to give himself, with a devotee's enthusiasm, to 
the law. That tongue of his — like Apollo's lute — cast a 
melodious spell even upon inanimate objects. It seemed 
like a sacrilege to silence so much music — to elevate to those 
serene but icy altitudes, one whose talents fitted him so 
splendidly for the arena of debate, who fleshed within him- 
self so much of the Promethean fire; but, in those days, 
when the court was migratory, moving from town to town, 
when the multitudes needed to be impressed, when there 
was no codified law, and when opinions were orally delivered 
to crowded court-rooms the prince was back again in his 
kingdom, the oracle and the orator met. 

It was not my privilege to know him; but I have often 
conversed with those who did. In figure majestic, in de- 
meanor dignified, in form and feature an Alcibiades, with 
waving locks of chestnut hair. His brow was massive ; and, 
from underneath it, his deep-set eyes of gray peered like an 
eagle's from its mountain eyrie ; whilst his quivering lip be- 
spoke a warmth of feeling and a fervor of imagination, 
ready to kindle into impassioned speech. Never did such 
extremes meet; but never once were the calm judicial bal- 
ancs disturbed. His voice was a baritone, rich, deep, and 
musical, one which even a Booth might have coveted. Its 
register was almost infinite ; and with its sweet-toned thun- 
ders, which suggested some cathedral organ, he held the 
court-room in a spell of magic. Keyed to every variant emo- 

8 



tion, it was master of all the harmonic chords. Like an 
ocean's tide, it rose and fell. Its wooing witchery com- 
pelled attention. At times, in melting accents, turned to 
mercy, it was soft and low, like the murmur of some Eolian 
harp — one seemed to be listening to the Sermon on the 
Mount; but again, in solemn intonations, stern with justice, 
it awoke the storm and. seemed to recall that scene at Sinai, 
when Jehovah thundered from the cloud and all the camp 
of Israel trembled. 

Marvelous man! He roamed all literature. The whole 
armory of the Bible was at his command — the letters of 
Paul, the psalms of David, the proverbs of Solomon, the 
sublime prophecies of Isaiah, and the wierd visions of 
Ezekiel. In painting the terrors of the Last Judgment, he 
possessed the brush of a Michael Angelo ; but in holding up 
his Transfigured Master, he possessed the genius of a 
Raphael. His eloquence upon the bench was like the now 
silent but once glorious torrent at Tallulah — it rolled in 
music over granite rocks and lifted rainbows while it molded 
cataracts. He delved with Blackstone and Kent, but he 
soared with Shakespeare and Milton. He reasoned with 
Plato and Socrates, but he knelt with Calvin and Knox. Said 
the great Chief Justice Bleckley, himself a philosopher and 
a poet : "In the spoken word, he was a literary genius, sur- 
passing any other Georgian, living or dead, I have ever 
known; and he so blended gentleness with justice that, 
since he has joined the immortals, he may be idealized as 
our judicial bishop enthroned in Georgia skies." To quote 
the brilliant Chief Justice Lochrane, himself an orator: 
"His sympathies were as warm as the loves of the angels. 
His addresses were thick to the very top with roses, but the 
solidity of the mountain was underneath. In his powers of 
oratory, he had few equals ; for he lifted himself to a throne, 
from which he dispensed words sweeter than the Arabian 
myrrh. My memory today fills with the light which his 
first words flashed upon my pathway of life, and if there 
was but one flower upon the earth, I would gather it to lay 
upon his grave." On a tour of Europe, made in the early 
forties, when overtaxed by professional employment, he 
found his chief delight, not in the crowded centers of pop- 



ulation, but in visiting the shrines of genius, chief of which 
to him was the tomb of Virgil. 

It was said of the great Chief Justice Marshall that, he 
was the "living voice of the Federal Constitution;" and 
doubly is it true of this unmatched oracle that he was the 
living voice of our own organic law. Called to the Supreme 
Bench when Georgia's court of last resort was first created, 
he spent the remainder of his days in developing the high 
tribunal, which is today the just pride and ornament of our 
great state. His colleagues yielded him the gavel; and 
while the seats on either side of him changed their occu- 
pants from time to time, he remained a majestic figure in 
the center, until he became the very impersonation of the 
court, its commanding genius, and he was acclaimed "Chief 
Justice" long before this title was conferred upon him by 
legal enactment. Finding the courts at war, statutes a-wry, 
decisions contradictory, he established justice in Georgia; 
he emancipated it from technicalities and fixed it upon en- 
during principles. For twenty-one years, he sat upon the 
bench, a judicial potentate, a supreme Lord Chancellor. His 
opinions range themselves, in an unbroken file, through the 
first thirty-five volumes of the Georgia Reports. On the 
printed page, they lose something of the tropical luxuriance 
with which they leaped from his lips ; but no richer caravan 
ever bore the spices of the Orient. The great triumvirate 
of jurists who presided over our first Supreme Bench were 
worthy of any age or of any land. We might indeed liken 
them to those three empyreal suns that blaze in the belt of 
Orion. Warner, Nisbet, Lumpkin! These three, but the 
greatest of these is he — of the golden tongue, of the golden 
heart, who comes to us tonight from the golden hills, our 
venerated father and founder — Joseph Henry Lumpkin. 

"Where lies the justice of the case?" That was the ques- 
tion which he unfailingly asked — the speer of Ithuriel with 
which he detected all imposture, and pierced to the heart 
every issue of law. "Ruat coelum, justicia fiat!" That was 
the motto which, like an aureole, blazed above him in the 
court-room. It was ever with a hand fearlessly impartial, 
inflexibly just, that he held the scales; and now that he has 

10 



quit the realm of mortals, it requires no stretch of fancy to 
picture him among the spirits of Elysium, an immortal 
Rhadamanthus. Glorious old jurist, welcome back to 
Athens ! Here still your gentle memory lingers ; and, in all 
the years which you have spent in Paradise, you have not 
forgotten the city that you loved, and whose children's chil- 
dren still love you. 



Next I salute the shade of that illustrious Georgian who 
comes to us from the historic groves of Liberty Hall — whose 
noble life, from its beginning to its end, was a commentary 
upon the words of Aristides : "0, Athenians, what Themis- 
tocles proposes would be greatly to the advantage of Athens, 
but it would be unjust!" Handicapped by physical infirmi- 
ties, a life-long sufferer, pale and wan, he has found at 
last an old, old prescription, which has made the invalid 
well. Who of us that knew him in his last days can ever 
forget that roller-chair, that attenuated figure, that fine- 
spun but musical voice with which he so often charmed the 
listening multitudes ? 

I see him first a beardless youth. He has traveled on foot 
almost the entire distance from Crawfordville to Washing- 
ton, Ga. Twenty miles from home, he is scarcely known. 
He is to appear in a case, on the opposite side of which is a 
lawyer, whose very name is a tower of strength. But the 
trial proceeds. This youngster at the bar is making the 
spectators lean forward. He knows every twist and turn 
of procedure. Nothing escapes him ; nothing takes him un- 
awares. At his tongue's end are the statute law of Georgia 
and the common law of England. He is a perfect encyclo- 
poedia — an index rerum. Even the judge on the bench rubs 
his glasses to get a better look and to wonder "how one 
small head could carry all he knew." Who is this cadaver- 
ous youth? Has Chatterton come back to earth? Is 
Creighton re-incarnate? Has old John Randolph, of Roan- 
oke, started his career all over again? Or does Orpheus in 
disguise revisit us from Mount Olympus ? But, hark ! The 
young eagle has commenced to soar. Men lean still fur- 
ther forward. But a moment ago, all were exchanging 
glances. Now every gaze is transfixed; not a head is turned, 

11 



lest a syllable be lost. The jury hangs upon his accents. 
It retires, for a moment only ; then returns. Not a man in 
the court-room but has felt the spell of a genius new to the 
public life of Georgia; and some doubtless there were who 
thought of a stripling by the name of David who, having 
met and slain his giant at the brook, was now ready to 
mount the steps of the throne of Irael. 

But again I see him in the Georgia House of Representa- 
tives. It is the summer of 1836. There is pending a meas- 
ure for the building of a railroad. To most of our Solons 
motive power means a mule. The Iron Horse is something 
new to the legislative mind. It is therefore under suspicion, 
a horse of evil omen, perhaps a Trojan horse, like the one 
which overthrew the house of Priam and sealed the doom of 
Hector. Opposition to the bill runs strong. Intemperate 
arguments are made against its passage, all of which are 
tantamount to this, expressed in almost the exact words of 
the priest of Neptune: "Beware of the Greeks! Back of 
this monster may be some crafty Ulysses." 

"Timeo Danaos, et dona ferentes!" 

But the young statesman from Taliaferro possessed the 
vision of a seer. He was in the secret of his times. He saw 
in this grim monster of iron the herald of a new day ; and in 
its untried power he recognized the mighty force which was 
destined to revolutionize all industry and to surpass the 
magic "presto" of the Arabian Nights. But the argument 
was chiefly of one sort. It was insisted that in the country 
to be traversed there were mountains "so steep that a spider 
would break his neck in trying to scale the cliffs." Wearily 
the debate wore on. Most of the members sat listless, when 
suddenly from underneath the gallery, in piercing tones 
which cut their way to the front, like silver-tipped arrows, 
there came a voice : 

"Mr. Speaker!" 

Instantly a profound silence falls upon the House. That 
musical alto is heard for the first time in a legislative body. 
All eyes are riveted upon the attenuated figure. New 

12 



thought is injected into a dull debate. The future of Geor- 
gia is foreshadowed with prophetic ken. For more than an 
hour he charms the assembled legislators. It is a task for 
Hercules which this youth of twenty-four has attempted. 
But the tide is turned. The road is built — one of the first 
in either hemisphere of the globe. It runs from the Chatta- 
hoochee to the Tennessee; and Georgia today owns the 
Western and Atlantic Railroad. It is a property worth 
millions of dollars; and to the common schools of Georgia 
its annual rental is a revenue of gold. 

I next see him in Congress. For sixteen years he is there 
— a watchman upon the walls of Zion. Strangest of enig- 
mas ! What is there in a frame so weak to feed so powerful 
a brain — where are its mighty forces hidden? It is the 
marvel of Washington. On entering Congress, he weighs 
but ninety-six pounds. Each speech which he makes is felt 
to be his last. When overcome with exhaustion, he takes 
his seat, one thinks of the death-bed scene of the Earl of 
Chatham in the House of Peers. Three times his demise is 
prematurely announced — his obituary is written — the news- 
papers of the state are in mourning. But the little giant is 
still needed in Georgia and "man is immortal till his work 
is done." 

On the floor of the great Convention at Milledgeville, in 
1861, with marvelous prescience, he again reads the future — 
to him an open book ; and in one of the mightiest arguments 
ever heard in Georgia he opposes the ordinance of Secession. 
But he accepts the result. When a government for the 
South is organized at Montgomery, he becomes Vice-Presi- 
dent of the Confederate States of America. The war ends. 
He is elected to the Federal Senate; but a Rpublican ma- 
jority refuses to accept his credentials. Then he writes his 
"War Between the States." Later, he takes his seat once 
more in the House. Eight years elapse; and then, from the 
executive chair of Georgia, at the ripe age of three score 
years and ten, this strange figure — this Hamlet of our his- 
tory — bows farewell. On his tomb at Crawfordville is 
chiseled this inscription : "I am afraid of nothing on earth, 
or above the earth or under the earth, except to do wrong. 

13 



The path of duty I shall ever endeavor to travel, fearing no 
evil and dreading no consequences." This glorious old 
statesman comes back to us tonight — without his crutch — 
no pallor on his cheek and no wrinkle on his brow. In Phi 
Kappa's name, let us greet the grand old Commoner and wel- 
come to her courts once more the illustrious sage of Liberty 
Hall — Alexander H. Stephens. 

Out of all the State, two Georgians have been chosen by 
our Legislature for the nation's Hall of Fame in Washing- 
ton. One of these is the Great Commoner. The other, by 
a singular coincidence, is his old room-mate at Athens, a 
Demosthenian, with whom he often crossed swords — a Geor- 
gia doctor of the old school, who lifted surgery from its 
couch of pain and registered a new era in the history of 
medicine, who robbed the knife of its terror and delayed the 
grave of its tenant, who brought to earth the twilight sleep 
of the gods, and whose claims to the ethereal honors are 
now recognized and uncontested by the world — the great 
discoverer of anaesthesia — Dr. Crawford W. Long. 

Nor can I think of the Great Commoner, without calling 
to mind that kingly Georgian, to whom for half a century 
his soul was knit, as a David's soul to Jonathan. He, too, was 
a Demosthenian. Whenever he rises up before me, a prodigy 
of strength, I think of Hercules slaying the Nemean lion or 
of Samson lifting the gates of Gaza. Said Mr. Stephens: 
"His is the greatest mind I ever came in contact with, and 
its operations, even in its errors, remind me of some mighty 
waste of waters." Tonight, then, let us remember that 
glorious Mirabeau of secession — that Robin Hood of Geor- 
gia outlaws — that unpardoned scion of a race of rebels — 
Robert Toombs. 



But, in the clouds which canopy this scene, I behold the 
spirit of another matchless Georgian — a Prometheus, with 
whose very name we associate the celestial fire of the gods. 
He left us when a pall of darkness hung heavily upon the 
state — at an hour when his going made it all the darker. 
Long have we missed his face amongst us, but his name 
still lingers lovingly upon our lips, his memory is still green 
in the hearts of all Athenians. Georgia has not forgotten 

14 



him; and when iniquity in public life has called for expos- 
ure and rebuke; when right has gone down in defeat and 
wrong has triumphed for a time; when virtue has failed of 
its reward and wicked men have risen to power — often, in 
such anxious hours, has she sighed for her beloved Boan- 
erges and longed for her glorious Son of Thunder. 

His eloquence was a flaming sword — the dread and terror 
of all who trifled with liberty — his, too, the mantle of that 
elder Jackson, who called down the fire of Heaven to con- 
sume the iniquitous records of the Yazoo Fraud. 

It was in the days of Reconstruction, when the accursed 
carpet-bagger was in power and the infamous scallawag was 
an encumberer of the earth ; when the State which you and 
I love was a subjugated province, with a government forced 
upon her by bayonets; when this noble old State of ours, 
whose veins are rippled by the purest of Anglo-Saxon blood, 
was a slave in the thrall of an Ethiopian bondage ; when mil- 
itary despots, drunk with an unbridled license of authority, 
were reveling in the citadel of law and when Georgians there 
were who fraternized with them and fawned at their feet; 
it was then that, in a prayer to Heaven, this grand old pa- 
triot cried out: 

"0, for some blistering word that I might write infamy 
upon the foreheads of these men!" 

Elijah, the Tishbite, on Mount Carmel, was not grander, 
when, with the fire of God, he consumed the iniquities of 
Baal. 

Paul, the Apostle, was not grander when, in chains at 
Rome, he stood before Agrippa. 

Cicero was not grander when, with impassioned elo- 
quence, he scourged a Cataline. 

Demosthenes was not grander when, with burning Greek, 
he denounced a Philip on the throne of Macedon. 

Knox was not grander when, in highland speech, he re- 
buked the Crown of Scotland. 

Luther was net grander when, at the Diet of Wurms, he 
defied the power of the Pope and, in his feeble but heroic 
hands, lifted the banner of the Reformation. 

15 



Would to Heaven that, in these recent years, we could 
have waked that tongue of fire to thunder its phillipics 
against the enemies of his country — to lay the scorpion lash 
upon slackers — to call down the lightnings upon profiteers — 
to stigmatize the Bolsheviki — to denounce pro-Germanism 
and to characterize with fit opprobrium, those who, in high 
office, when the country was at war, have sought to obstruct 
the administration and to weaken the arm of a Democratic 
President. 

Think ye that, in such a voice, there would have been 
any comfort for Kaisers — any humiliation for Georgia — 
had its thunders been loosened in the American Senate? 

Seldom has a life been lived so high above the fog-belt, 
so fixed in its principles of right, so rich in its clustering 
recompenses of reward. Speaker of the American House of 
Representatives — Secretary of the Treasury — Governor of 
Georgia — President of the Provisional Congress of the Con- 
federate States — Major General in the Confederate Army — 
these were some of the great commissions which he held, 
and back to the people he returned them all unstained. 

From that great Bush Arbor speech of 1868, in which he 
denounced the enormities of Reconstruction — with its with- 
ering invective still warm upon his lips — with its burning 
patriotism still unextinguished in his heart — he was called 
to his reward ; and he literally arose to heaven in a chariot 
of fire. But, lo, in a cloud of incense and of memory, he 
descends to earth. Tonight, let us send up our shouts to 
greet him in the air; and, with gratitude welling in our 
hearts, let us salute the immortal shade of Howell Cobb. 

If this prince of Georgians ever had an equal, for power 
of invective, for vigor of intellect, for intrepidity of soul — 
he was equalled, in all the annals of our state, by only one 
man — a Demosthenian — that great orator of orators, who 
uncloaked a Mahone — who discomfitted a Blaine — who de- 
fied the military usurpers, and, in Davis Hall, bared his 
unprotected breast to the gleam of Federal bayonets : Ben- 
jamin H. Hill. 



Once more I look, and on the key-stone of Phi Kappa's 
arch of glory, I behold the youngest of all her immortal 

16 



faces. He comes to us in the ascension robes of the New 
South; and around him, in a wreath of stars, I can read 
the divine beatitude: "Blessed are the peace-makers, for 
they shall be called the children of God." It seems but yes- 
terday that, in his manhood's prime of beauty, he fell upon 
sleep — that, on a Christmas day, whose saddened sunshine 
is remembered still, we laid him down to rest among the 
hills. Had he lived but the fraction of a decade longer 
the toga would have been his — the toga of a William H. 
Crawford and of a John Forsyth — his, too, "the applause 
of listening senates to command." But, alas, "God's finger 
touched him and he slept." Where, in all the annals of our 
state, has a private citizen, at the age of thirty-six, ever 
wielded such a wand of power? 

"No cloak of office from his shoulders hung, 
He wore no title, played no usual part; 

Yet left an epitaph on every tongue 
And found a sepulchre in every heart." 

Eternally a youth, I can see him now, in a boyish caprice 
of rolicksome enthusiasm. It was in the fall of 1884, when 
the election of Mr. Cleveland was in doubt. Days elapsed. 
But at last the good news came. Organizing a body of 
Democrats, he starts for the capitol, where the Legislature 
is in session. Flag in hand, he brushes past the sergeant- 
at-arms, and, planting himself in the aisle, shouts : 

"Mr. Speaker, a message from the American people." 

Colonel Lucius M. Lamar, of Pulaski, speaker pro. tern., 
was at that moment in the chair; and catching the import 
of this sudden interruption, he replied: 

"Let the massage be received." 

Advancing to the speaker's desk, this bold intruder takes 
the gavel from the hands of that astonished officer; and, 
rapping for order, he exclaims: 

"In the name of Grover Cleveland, the next President of 
the United States, I declare this body adjourned." 

Shades of Oliver Cromwell ! Never was a legislative body 
dispersed in such a manner ; and while pandemonium reigned 

17 



in Georgia's capitol, there must have been an answering 
shout in England, from the ghost of the old Puritan Dem- 
ocrat, who once adjourned a parliament. 

Then, in a series of volleys, a cannon from the ramparts 
of the Constitution, thundered the joyful news. But, alas, 
the sequel ! Four years later, draped in the national colors, 
the little gun was ready to belch its fire again. But the dis- 
patches told a story of defeat. Unruffled, the young captain 
of artillery took a pencil from his pocket, and, scribbling on 
a piece of paper, he put into the cannon's mouth, this gentler 
blast, from the muse of Charles Wesley : 

"A charge to keep I have." 

What a marvel this man was — of restless energy! It 
was he whose constructive genius furnished the electric 
current which reanimated and revived a prostrate section — 
who organized chautauquas, planned expositions, built 
homes for indigent Confederate soldiers, wrote platforms 
for political conventions, promoted railway enterprises, de- 
veloped quarries, invited foreign capital to Georgia for in- 
vestment, and who, like a young Pelham, in the charge of 
battle, led us from tribulation into triumph, until we won at 
last an industrial Appomattox, without the firing of a single 
musket or a solitary stain upon our banners. It was he who 
wrought the miracle of a rehabilitated Dixie, so that, when 
he died, men thought of the architect of old St. Paul's, upon 
whose tomb in the cathedral this epitaph is written: "Si 
requiris monumentum, circumspice" — "if you seek his mon- 
ument, look around you." 

But, above everything else, he stood for brotherhood ; and 
first, with his radiant pen, a magician's rod, but later, with 
his unrivaled eloquence, a prophet's tongue of fire, he sued 
for peace, for unity, for love — till, at his dying couch, like 
the sisters of Bethany, knelt North and South, and, in the 
anguish of an hour was forgotten the estrangement of a 
century. 0, sweet bugler of the New England banquet! 
In your home beyond the stars, with all the celestial harps 
awaks, methinks that you have heard no sweeter music, 
among the heavenly hills, than just the answering echoes 
of your own ! 

18 



Born on the hills of Athens, it was here that his boyhood 
days were spent ; here that the home in which he lived still 
stands ; here that the plain white shaft of marble can still 
be seen on which his father's name is carved; here that he 
wooed and won his bride; here that he often came to visit 
her whose hands were "worn and wrinkled but fairer yet 
than the hands of mortal woman and stronger still to lead 
him than the hands of mortal man" — where the old black 
mammy crooned him into sleep — where the pigeons flut- 
tered down through the golden air — where the sword of a 
Confederate sire first consecrated him to duty and to pa- 
triotism ; here that, at the truest altar he had ever known, 
a mother's love, he caught the golden spirit of the New 
Commandment ; and here that, in Phi Kappa's ancient hall, 
he nursed that budding eloquence which, in the years to 
come, was destined to sanctify anew the associations of old 
Plymouth Rock and to sweeten the atmosphere of the re- 
public with the memory of an immortal Cavalier. 

Indulge me for a moment here. For tender memories 
come trooping back ; and, touched by the music of the Long 
Ago, my heart must speak. I am tonight in Athens — the 
Mecca of my college days and still the home of my kindred. 
Some are gone, "the old familiar faces;" but some are left, 
and on them linger the bonnie smiles of "auld lang syne." 
-Here's to the classic town, whose towers I first beheld, in 
the fall of eighty-five : 

"Athens, bay-crowned, beauteous Athens, 

Green forever be thy groves, 
Where, as in the years now sleeping, 

Still a youth of twenty roves — 
Fresh, within this heart, unfading 

Will thy recollections cling, 
Like a vine around the cedar, 

In the splendor of the spring." 

It was in the home of his mother that I spent my under- 
graduate days — not in the pillared mansion of an earlier 
date, but in a cottage, wreathed with honey-suckles and 
with roses. It was painted a deep red ; and, even on wintry 
days, its memory throws around me the fragrant charm of 
an Indian summer. Other homes there be more splendid; 

19 



but that little red cottage on the hills of Athens is to me 
more regal than the peerless bloom of the Lancastrian rose. 
I can almost fancy that it hides the fount for which the 
Spaniard sought in vain; for, when I am worn and weary, 
I have only to wander back along the old paths, mount the 
steps and lift the latch of that Athenian home, and instantly 
the air brightens, the shadows lift, the heart grows young, 
and the siren sings again. 

There stands, in the heart of Georgia's capital, a monu- 
ment erected by a nation's gratitude to an illustrious son 
of old Phi Kappa. Around its base, like ocean billows, the 
surging waves of commerce break, while silently upon its 
head, the golden sunlight of old Dixie falls. On the pedes- 
tal, which supports a massive figure in bronze, is chiseled 
this inscription : "And when he died he was literally loving 
a nation into peace." At the base of that monument, we 
read a name whose very mention thrills a continent. To- 
night, let us open wide our arms to greet him back again — 
that gentle healer of the wounds of war — that glorious 
evangel of the New South's resurrection — that beloved dis- 
ciple — that peerless editor — that matchless orator — that 
"noblest Roman of them all" — Henry Woodfin Grady. 



Time fails me to sum the list. But, among the glorious 
spirits which this hour has assembled, there is one whose 
trumpet call, from the Blue Ridge to the sea, still rings 
through Georgia, in a thousand silvery echoes: "Speak no 
uncertain words, but let your united voice go forth, to be 
resounded from every mountain top and echoed from every 
gapping valley; let it be written in the rainbow that spans 
your falls and read in the crest of every wave upon your 
ocean shores until it shall put a tongue in every wound of 
Georgia's mangled honor that shall cry to Heaven for Lib- 
erty or Death." It is our Peter the Hermit — our Patrick 
Henry of Secession — our glorified soldier of the legion who, 
from Fredericksburg was lifted into immortality — Thomas 
R. R. Cobb. 

There, too, is the bay-crowned martyr of Manassas. He 
resigns his seat in the Confederate Congress, hastens to Sa- 
vannah, and seizing the guns of the State, says to the Gov- 

20 



ernor: "I go to illustrate Georgia!" and tonight "where 
the war-drums throb no longer" he is illustrating Georgia 
still, a peer among princes of the sky — Francis S. Bartow. 

In this same group of immortals, I see the just, the bril- 
liant, the upright, the intrepid — Linton Stephens. 

Hither come two together — for they were never separ- 
ated — a noble pair of brothers ! Hand in hand, they roamed 
the fields of science and, hand in hand, they climbed the 
heights of fame, to be transfixed, where stars forever shine, 
"The Gemini of the Scientific Heavens." Founders of the 
great University of California. They sleep on the far side 
of the continent, in the guardian shade of the great se- 
quoias; but tonight, at Phi Kappa's call, they have crossed 
the Sierras and the Rockies, to camp on the hills of the 
Oconee — John and Joseph LeConte. 

Next I see one who bears a radiant torch — and lettered 
in gold around it is a single word: "Education." Born in 
Georgia, he went from Alabama to Congress, and he sleeps 
in Virginia upon the banks of the James. Member of Con- 
gress, Ambassador to Spain, trustee of two great educa- 
tional funds, historian and scholar — he dispelled the gloom 
of ignorance! His statue is in the nation's Hall of Fame; 
and there he stands, the Moses of an intellectual Exodus for 
all our Southland — Jabez L. M. Curry. 

Next, I catch the glorified features of an old man elo- 
quent who, with the corded thews of a Hercules, strangled 
the hydra of the Louisiana lottery, drove the gamblers to 
cover, cleansed the state's Augean stables, and from the 
escutcheon of a proud old commonwealth erased its only 
stigma. It is our ascended Benjamin M. Palmer. 

Behold another transfigured face — a Nathaniel in whom 
there is no guile, a Georgian "to the manner born" — a Ches- 
terfield — a Sir Philip Sidney — a Chevalier Bayard — in whose 
charm of accent, in whose courtliness of bearing, there lin- 
gers still the flower of the French nobility, a Democrat of 
Democrats, who, by Republican appointment, is lifted to the 
Supreme Bench of the United States — Joseph R. Lamar. 

And, last but not least, there, too, is our great Senator, 

21 



long a trustee of this university, a Georgian who relin- 
quished all too soon the toga which he held aloft without 
a stain — an old Roman of the type of Cato, who never ut- 
tered one syllable in the Senate to comfort the foes of his 
country — an old patriot who, for all the treasures of Gath, 
would not have bent his knee to the god of the Phillistines. 
Augustus 0. Bacon! It was a happy hour for thee, but a 
tragic one for Georgia, when the God of battles called thee 
home! 

But let us not despair of the future, nor hang our harps 
upon the willows. That shining host is with us still. Those 
crowned immortals are not dead. 



"Where is the victory of the grave? 

What dust upon the spirit lies? 
God keeps the noble life He gave — 

The prophet never dies." 



But what is the lesson of the hour ? Do these voices from 
the past speak to us in an unknown tongue ? Are they con- 
cerned only with the events of yesterday? Or, in familiar 
accents, attuned to the music of another shore, do they ad- 
dress themselves, here and now, to the living issues of to- 
day ? Ye glorious envoys from the spirit land ! At this su- 
preme moment, when, in the balances of God, the destinies 
of a world are trembling, have ye no word of wisdom or of 
warning for a bewildered America? Methinks that, from 
the lips of our great Chief Justice — the ever honored 
founder and father of Phi Kappa — from those lips now 
touched with the honey of the skies, I catch a message, in 
which all the glorified spirits of the air unite; and this is 
what I hear, in accents of melodious thunder: 

"Phi Kappas, revere the Constitution. Exemplify the 
motto on Georgia's coat-of-arms — 'Wisdom, Justice, Mod- 
eration/ Illustrate the legend upon her old colonial seal — 
'Non sibi, sed aliis,' 'Not for ourselves but for others.' Pre- 
serve inviolate the Ark of Liberty. Vindicate the time- 
honored principles of Jefferson. But, lest there be written 
upon the shield of America what was written upon the 
walls of Babylon : 'mene, mene, tekel upharsin — lest 

22 



'Ichabod' be lettered above the door of the Temple of Free- 
dom — be true Philo-kosmians. Think in terms of a world — 
leave not an unfinished task — keep faith with your dead in 
France — and uphold the arms of your great President, 
Woodrow Wilson !" 

Aye, there's a name! In all the tides of time, no taller 
figure has arisen. Call him an idealist, if you will — a vis- 
ionary — but the God of battles, at a crisis in human his- 
tory, has lifted him to the leadership of the nations. No 
grander seer ever dreamed of a world's betterment; and, 
with only one divine exception, no broader or sweeter spirit 
has ever hovered in benediction above this planet — aye, not 
since the cosmic dawn, when the spirit of God brooded upon 
the waters, and the evening and the morning were the first 
day! 

Et tu, Brute! All, save life itself, has this great Demo- 
crat sacrificed upon humanity's altar, only to be reviled 
and maligned, persecuted and pilloried by those who call 
themselves Democrats — but a more un-American bunch, 
with a more Teutonic accent, never sang "The Watch on 
the Rhine." What shall we call them? 0, Webster, for a 
word ! Pigmies — hiding in the pockets and dancing around 
the shoes of a recumbent Gulliver! Insects — belting their 
wings and buzzing in the blaze of a great light, which they 
can neither comprehend nor extinguish. Villified even upon 
his sick bed ! 0, shame, where is thy blush ! He may have 
made his mistakes. Be it so — but when his traducers have 
all perished with the ephemera of an hour — every name 
among them relegated to oblivion — this great Democrat 
whom they have wronged, will flourish above their graves, 
like a cedar of Lebanon, and, in the eternal substance of his 
fame, will tower, like a Matterhorn among the Alps! 

0, God, in this troubled hour, help us to hear aright the 
voices of the past ! 

One hundred years ago, on the rocky isle of St. Helena, 
amid the surges of an angry ocean, the conqueror of Europe 
lay endungeoned. The power of Napoleon was at an end. 
Today, in the little kingdom of the Dutch, an outcast em- 
peror, once lord of all the proud German States, is a fugi- 

23 



tive — his empire gone, like Othello's occupation; and all in 
vain does he now call to the manes of Von Moltke and to 
the shades of Bismarck. At either end of the great cycle of 
the century, we find a devastated Europe, we behold the 
wreckage of a world at war! Two great holocausts! — one 
the work of a Bonaparte, the other of a Hohenzollern. The 
balance of power has failed! There is seemingly but one 
alternative — a League of Nations. We proposed it — if we 
do not join it, a world is leagued against us, and a certain 
path to war is cut. Outside the league, we have everything 
to lose — -leadership, commerce, character, opportunity, 
honor. In it, we have everything to gain ; but if we gained 
nothing and jeopardized all, let us not be "quitters" — let us 
remember this, that no man who looks back, having put his 
hand to the plow, is fit to enter the Kingdom of God. 

We hear much of entangling alliances. The spirit of 
Washington is invoked. But we have moved a century and 
a quarter forward — in effect, a millenium — since the Father 
of his Country slept at Mount Vernon. Forces have been 
liberated of which he never dreamed. In the beginning, 
when an infant liberty needed safeguards of protection, she 
was given a continent for her cradle and surrounded by the 
inviolate seas. Aye, for humanity's sake, she was divinely 
kept, like the ark in the rushes of the Nile. But the trum- 
pets of God have summoned her to power. Today steam 
and electricity have annihilated distance; iron cables now 
bind the continents and, in a thousand reciprocities of trade, 
the interests of the world are interlocked, until they "glitter 
like a swarm of fire-flies, tangled in a silver braid." All 
climates meet in our markets. What barrier today is an 
ocean ? — when New York and London are within a moment's 
call, when East is West and West is Eeast, and even the sea 
itself is a highway, white with the caravans of the mingled 
hemispheres ? This planet, which is but a speck among the 
stars, is, in the eyes of God, a neighborhood, and even the 
Samaritan is neighbor to the Jew. Out of one flesh hath 
He made all nations — and, in the sacred memories of the 
past, in the hallowed hopes of the future, in the divine blood 
of creation's covenant, and in the ancient ties of Old Mor- 

24 



tality, we are linked together in a kinship older than the 
mountains, and we are indissolubly one forever! 

It is not to prolong but to end the reign of bloodshed that 
a league is demanded — not to send our boys to Europe but to 
keep them at home. If wars are ever to cease — if the Golden 
Age of Isaiah is ever to come — if the peace for which Tim- 
rod prayed is ever to be realized — if an unending truce to 
battle is ever sounded — America must do her part to the 
finish. I can find no other star of hope on the worlds hor- 
izon. I can see no other bow of promise on the cloud. We 
must end this nightmare of suspense. 

We must wipe out the crime of the Senate! We must 
regain for our beloved country the prestige which she has 
lost, through her Lodges, her Borahs, and her Hiram John- 
sons. We want no stain upon our starry flag. Without nul- 
lifying reservations, we must ratify the Treaty of Versail- 
les ; and that, I believe, will be the platform of the great con- 
vention which is soon to meet in San Francisco. Then — for 
those who have butchered the League, there will be no city 
of refuge from the avenger of blood and no shelter on earth 
except in a Republican fold! 

Away with the fetish of "America for Americans!" It 
belongs to a dead past. Be this our slogan: "America for 
humanity ! The fatherhood of God implies the brotherhood 
of man. He who made us our brother's keeper, did not 
limit us to our own vine and figtree, nor fix our boundaries 
at the water's edge. He made us the wardens of a world. 
Philo-kosmians — 

"Go, brand him with disgrace, 
\ Whose thought is for himself alone, 
And not for all his race." 

Was it not to meet an hour like this that the Ark of Free- 
dom was committed to our fathers? Who can sound the 
purposes of God ? It may be for this that we have come to 
the kingdom. It may be for this that Washington resisted a 
tyrant and that Columbus discovered a continent. We are 
not the misers of liberty, but its trustees and its stewards — 
not its proprietors, but its propogandists ! Religion was 
given to the Hebrews, not to be squandered alone upon the 

25 



seed of Abraham, but, in Pentecostal power, to be held in 
trust for all — for Jew and for Gentile, for bond and for 
free. The Nazarine did not die for one country alone — that 
country, a remote, a diminutive, a despised province of the 
Mediterranean — He died to emancipate a world from bond- 
age. Nor did he die alone for His friends but for His en- 
emies. 

Be we true to our trust? That is the question which I 
leave with you tonight. Who knows but what America is 
on trial? Let us not keep back the leven of liberty. It 
was "something withheld" that brought destruction to 
Ananias and to Achan. Let us beware how we substitute 
a part for a whole — a segment for a circle. It is a miscon- 
ception of our role, in the great drama of time, to localize 
what belongs to humanity or to bury the king's treasure in 
a corner of the field. Liberty is the twin-sister of Religion. 
She, too, has her Calvary and her Cana, her Judas and her 
John ; and she, too, even from her cross cries out : "And I, 
if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me!" At the en- 
trance to New York harbor, with an uplifted torch, stands 
Liberty enlightening the world. It is America's conscience 
on guard. There's a stewardship which we cannot deny, a 
responsibility which we cannot shirk. Israel lost the Ark 
of God ; and America may lose the Ark of Freedom, if she 
fails to recognize her larger duty and to perform her 
mightier mission — "to make the world safe for Democracy." 



26 



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